Interview with Jeff Somers

Q: What made you decide to go with the first person narrative for this novel?

This was instinct—I had Cates' voice in my head. The man's been bitching about things in my head for years. This is one reason why I drink.

Q: Avery Cates and his merry band of misfits are a fun and interesting bunch. Are you surprised by the fact that you managed to make a hitman so endearing?

A little—especially because Cates is kind of mean. He's constantly bullying people. But I think the mitigating factor is that he truly feels that he has to be this way—that the world will walk all over him if he doesn't put up a constant fight. I think the reader can see that. And his longing for a past world where things were fair and made sense—a world that maybe didn't actually exist—softens him, because you get the feeling he'd jump at the chance to become an accountant or a butcher, if he had the chance.

Q: Will you be touring to promote the book this fall? If so, are there any specific dates that have been confirmed as of yet?

I haven't contemplated a formal tour. So far I have one reading scheduled in New York at Rocky Sullivans (www.rockysullivans.com) in Brooklyn, new York on September 24, and I'll be mooching around World Fantasy Con in Saratoga in November if anyone wants to buy me a drink. I'm sure we'll be adding a few readings and such as we go.

Plus, I often starting quoting my own work when I run into people in taverns, usually accompanied by a little staggering soft-shoe and the expectation that they buy me a drink, and I've been toying with the idea of counting these 'performances' as 'readings'.

Q: What do you feel is your strength as a writer/storyteller?

My main strength is a brutal willingness to cut, cut, and then cut some more when I'm revising. At least half of what I write is complete crap, and my strength lies in realizing that. I think. That, and years of alcohol abuse has taught me how to not go to the bathroom for hours and hours, allowing lots of unbroken writing time.

Q: Orbit came up with a terrific website to promote THE ELECTRIC CHURCH (www.the-electric-church.com). Did you have any input during the process of creating the site? What do you think of the final product?

I actually wrote almost all of the content—the words, not the code. I'd set up a site that had the same concept—official site for the Church, a hacker breaking in and vandalizing pages to warn you, a code here and there for fun—and they took that and re-worked it on a classier and higher level, and then added a lot of complex codes that were fun to work through. I really enjoyed that, coming up with puzzles or having puzzles presented to me, and then writing little scripts and such for chatbots to say or actors to record. The guy I worked with at Orbit, Alex Lencicki, is amazing—very sharp and smart, and he made the site into something I never dreamed it could be.

Q: The fact that there are a website and a blog dedicated to your work is an indication that interaction with your readers is important to you as an author. How special is it to have the chance to interact directly with your fans?

First off, I don't have fans. Not yet. What I have are vaguely interested people who might decide to read my book. The folks who have read my zine aren't fans because my zine is an embarrassing collection of personal anecdotes involving me getting drunk, weeping, and losing my pants—there's no respect there, so they're not really fans.

That said, I like interacting with people over the web. It's a nice buffer. Because I am truly thankful and amazed that people find my writing or my persona interesting and entertaining, so I want to interact. But I also fear people, because so many are crazy. I'd always worry about people coming to burn down my house because they didn't like that last plot twist where my main character is revealed to be one of Santa's Elves, or to have been dreaming the whole story.

You may think I'm kidding about the burn down the house thing, but I am not.